OVERHAULING AMERICA : CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER BACKS PROP. 209.

Byline: Eric Wahlgren Daily News Staff Writer

Asserting that government has for too long put off affirmative action reforms, civil rights leader Roy Innis said Friday that he expects Proposition 209 to spur a needed overhaul of the way government helps promote equal opportunities for all Californians.

``I wish it didn't have to happen,'' said Innis, national chairman of the Congress on Racial Equality, referring to the statewide ballot measure that would end racial and gender preferences in public employment, higher education and contracting.

``But I believe that it will force a reassessment of what we have to do to save black America - and save America,'' he said.

In an interview with Daily News editors and reporters, Innis said that his views on affirmative action have left him estranged from many other African-American leaders, who see him as treasonous to the cause of civil rights.

But Innis insisted that the real treason is in allowing the goals of equal opportunity for all to be corrupted by affirmative action programs that he said are no more than racial quotas that have robbed African-Americans of their initiative.

What America needs, Innis said, are new ways to help minorities gain job skills and get through school ``so that by the time they graduate, they don't need any help.''

He said the irony of Proposition 209 is that if it had been proposed 30 years ago, it would have been embraced as an important civil rights reform. He said he believes that Martin Luther King would have endorsed it.

``Categorically,'' Innis said, ``King would have supported it.''

Apprised of Innis' comments, a leading official with a Los Angeles-based civil rights organization strongly disagreed.

``There is no way in heck Martin Luther King would have found himself on the same side of history as Jesse Helms, Bob Dole or Pete Wilson,'' said Gary Phillips, project director of the MultiCultural Collaborative.

Phillips said Proposition 209 wrongly assumes that America has already achieved a color-blind society and insisted that the initiative would only further distance California from that goal.

``Let us have a discussion about how it is we create an inclusive, merit-based society,'' said Phillips of the MultiCultural Collaborative, adding that affirmative action does not use racial quotas. ``But you can't do that when you are saying we are going to take away what little proactive measures we have to achieve that and yet put nothing in their place.''

Innis agreed that was the primary problem with Proposition 209 - that it did not provide a plan B for after the measure's passage that would provide equal opportunity for people who are truly disadvantaged.

He said that regardless of whether the measure passes or fails, that was the important challenge facing California and the nation: devising a means that provides opportunity without what he described as the abuses of affirmative action.

Innis called on government to increase the emphasis on socioeconomic factors in determining who should receive the benefits of affirmative action. Like some minorities, some poor whites may need help finding better education and job opportunities, he said.

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Photo: Congress on Racial Equality chairman Roy Innis favors education over affirmative action.

Gus Ruelas/Daily News